Exciting major league football in a live stream for Lok Leipzig with pay-per-view pay wall by BMK.TV
Football is by far the most popular sport in Germany. Even if the live atmosphere in the stadium cannot be replaced, there are many reasons for a live stream. Many fans can´t come because of professional or family reasons or their work abroad and so they have an opportunity to be “live” present via a live stream.
Screenshot Lok Leipzig Homepage mit Livestream Paywall
The management of the 1. FC Lokomotive Leipzig came to us at the end of 2015 to check the technical feasibility of live stream transfers from the Bruno Plache Stadium. Due to a special agreement with the Nordostdeutsche Fußballverband and the Mitteldeutschen Rundfunk (MDR), the club was able to use the live transmission rights itself. It was planned to transfer home games of the season 2015/2016 by a live stream. With just 5, – Euro per game, the live stream offer was to be financed on the one hand and the association work on the other hand.
The first obstacle was to provide an internet connection with adequate upload bandwidth in the stadium. The possibility of a live stream transmission via satellite uplink was eliminated due to the large number of planned transmissions. Thanks to the support of a regional Internet access provider, a radio link from the station was implemented with 10 Mbp/s upstream. So video data from our encoder could be transferred with sufficient bandwidth to our CDN server in the data centre.
Second point: realization of pay wall and password-protected access control. Due to the short realization time, only the small pay wall solution came into consideration. In contrast to a pay wall complete solution with integrated payment processing and account administration, the club took over the sale of live stream tickets itself via the fan shop. For this purpose we provided a list of access codes for the live stream transmission for each game. After ordering and payment was this code sent to a buyer by e-mail. By entering the access code, our system checks in the background whether the code is valid for the desired transmission and if positive it releases the live stream. To exclude multiple uses, only one live stream request per access code is possible.
The production and live stream transmission itself is carried out depending on tried and tested procedures. The HD image signal of the stadium camera from Lokruf.TV is transferred to our encoder in the stadium together with the audio commentary from Lokruf Radio and transferred to our CDN server at 4 Mbit/s. There, the signal is then available in three versions (HD 720p, 480p and 360p), in order to be able to deliver the live stream to various devices in optimal quality, depending on the bandwidth of the Internet connection.
Conclusion after the first games: technically perfect realization and with several hundred paying viewers after the first transmission. All that remains is to keep the fingers crossed for the hoped rise of 1. FC Lokomotive Leipzig.
Our press release from 15. 04. 2016
Lokruf.TV Live: Very close from home
The season of the football league north-east is almost over: 1 FC Lokomotive Leipzig has only 4 home games to compete, one of them is on next Saturday against FC International Leipzig. Fans can now be even closer to home games. For those who do not make it to Probstheida, simply look at the live stream.
Technically realized is the live stream by BMK.TV from Leipzig. Managing Director, Thomas Beer, explains: “We take over a signal from Lokruf.TV and we operate the technological process so that the video can be watched on Internet. To do this, we convert the camera signal, realize the password-protected live platform and take care of the server technology. ”
The use of the stream is chargeable: 5 Euros are payable per game. “The revenues flow into the budget of our traditional club. Those who are watching live also support Lok Leipzig, “says Martin Mieth, managing director of the 1. FC Lokomotive Leipzig e.V. He expects that between 100 and 200 spectators will use this offer. “We are delighted to have found BMK.TV, a local company which has the appropriate experience and references in this field,” says Mieth.
